The wrong sort of victim
The NY Times cautiously tests the heat.
Britain’s most senior police officer has called for the government to change or clarify the law regarding free speech amid intense public debate over the arrest of an Irish comedian on suspicion of inciting violence against transgender people on social media.
Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, which serves the London area, said his officers had been put in an “impossible position” in which laws were drawing them into “toxic culture-wars debates.”
Some toxic culture-wars debates.
When, I wonder, is the last time 5 UK cops arrested a man for social media threats against women.
Have any UK cops ever done that?
They don’t arrest rapists, so it seems unlikely that they pay much attention to threats, let alone remarks that have to be scrutinized very hard in order to detect any genuine threatening quality to them.
In short I don’t think so. Violence against women goes unpunished, so talking smack wouldn’t even register.
Why is it, I wonder for the millionth time, that “trans women” are considered so enormously much more vulnerable than actual women?
Quoting this bit for the second time today – it gets on my nerves a tad.
Mr. Rowley defended the arrest in his statement, saying that the law “dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offense” and that “most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers.”
But you don’t. You don’t agree, and you don’t do it. Women get threats of physical violence on social media all the time. How often do you investigate it? Ever?
Mr. Linehan’s arrest has reignited a debate over the policing of speech in Britain, an issue the Trump administration has fiercely criticized.
Blah blah blah, yes, we know, but what about this two-tier thing? Why do you see trans people as victims and women as making a fuss about nothing?
I would really like to know.
Today I republished my previous essay about Graham and blasphemy and provocation and free speech, and its anaolog with other examples of liberal in-fighting along free-speech lines, such as Charlie Hebdo and Salman Rushdie. It’s from a few years ago, but I think it holds up. And I’m glad! Because I’m in no state to write up anything new today; I’m kinda overwhelmed by everything right now.
https://artymorty.substack.com/p/the-courage-to-joke-in-censorious
But I did add this preface, which I think is a fair defence of Graham in his current predicament:
There’s this thing where if you’re under intense scrutiny and everyone’s attacking you, people start to expect you to play perfect baseball. Especially if you’re already a big name. The opposing team can be epic fuck-ups. And they always are. But you hit even one foul, and the baying crowd explodes — you’ve proven their point! Off with your head! The losers win!
It feels like Graham’s in that pickle right now and it’s frankly unfair. Play a perfect game — every pitch a home run; every tweet a knee-slapper that sidles right up to the cutting edge without ever crossing into genuine offence — or walk off the diamond in shame, forever.
Graham’s a working-class human and he’s stubbornly insistent on staying that way, no matter how “famous” he gets. Which breaks the whole fame system, and it irks many people to no end, including some of his own fans. They don’t know what to make of his radical rejection of both the celebrity and class systems, which permeate Western culture. He got famous by accident, while trying to be really good at comedy writing, whereas most poeple get famous by trying really hard to get famous for the sake of being famous. We have intuited that, to the point that we’ve subconsciously absorbed the message that people who get famous and who don’t subsequently spend their days tending to it, maintaining it, and ensuring that it perpetuates forever, are somehow so weird it doesn’t compute.
There are no E! Hollywood Now! (or whatever) junket interviews with gonzo comedy-writing funnymen journalist-activists. (Ricky Gervais sometimes comes close, but he, too, plays the Hollywood game, and no one would accuse Gervais of being truly gonzo in the way that Graham is.) He’s in his own unique category.
And Graham’s Irish! As much as I try to avoid treating his Irishness as his central attribute (that’s kinda racist and shallow), in this case it’s rather crucial to understanding him: he hates class pretensions — that’s centuries of conflict with the ultra-neurotic, ultra-hierarchical English, for you — and his entire comedy career rests on sniffing out cultural hypocrisies and making comedy out of them. He’s like a prize truffle pig for it. The most prized one in modern history — a strong case can be made for that.
Well, I hate class pretences, too, and I, too, see myself as a cultural outsider who likes to mock the invisible rules and rituals that imprison everyone, blue and white collar alike. So I have a strong allegiance to Graham and his principles, because his deep-down philosophical roots are very much in line with mine. From time to time his tweets fall outside my comfort zone, and his politics occasionally diverge from mine. (He no doubt feels the same about my tweets and politics, and that’s okay!) But these things — so small in the grand scheme, these matters of taste or political difference of opinion — shouldn’t be dug up and weaponized when friends and allies are in trouble, to turn us against each other, or to absolve us of our responsibilities to help each other.
I fear that this battle, the trans mess, is so difficult, that people feel compelled to narrow their scope of political tolerance, out of a sense of defensiveness. I can understand that instinct. But I think the movement is bigger when it overcomes such things. I feel we’re stronger when we open up, at least a bit.
That isn’t to say let’s allow right-wing assholes and misogynists and homophobes to take over — lord knows those blocs are angling to get in. I’m sickened by the anti-gay activism and Trumpism that have smuggled themselves into the “GC” scene, and I have no interest in playing nice with or ignoring that.
But at the same time, let’s try to be generous and see the big picture. Individual to individual, good intentions are there. And so are shared objectives.
Graham’s been a force for good in the movement overall — because it’s actually several overlapping movements. Including freedom of speech and freedom of expression. On that front, his cause is very much mine. And it should be yours, too.
Damn right it should.
Standing ovation for Arty.
It all, eventually, comes down to free speech and government trying to suppress it. Without free speech, there’s no ability to name our grievances. There’s no pointing out where and when the police have overstepped their remit. There’s no appealing to courts when those in power are lying about the law to protect themselves and deprive ordinary people of rights.
And Ophelia hits the nail on the head when she points out that all of the above falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women. It’s bad enough that women are the ones who are supposed to be disbelieved first, without supplying extraordinary evidence for any claims; if we aren’t even allowed to voice those claims in the first place, we have no rights whatsoever.