Cancel culture can never be regarded casually

There is an important debate about how to negotiate trans rights and women’s rights, but trying to shut down one side of the debate as unacceptable will make it more difficult to work out a fair solution, writes Kenan Malik, a British writer, lecturer and broadcaster.

In his latest Observer column he examines the rising tolerance of censorship whether by the social elites in universities or the government, or among the educated young. For example, the de-platforming of those opposing views caught up in the cult of the fashionable transgender ideology has generated dismay. Though not without blame of censorship themselves, "many of the issues they ["anti-woke free speech champions"] highlight are nevertheless important".

Of particular concern is that "there is growing support in sections of the left and on campuses for the suppression of unacceptable views".

The Higher Education Policy Institute found in a student survey last year that 79% thought “Students that feel threatened should always have their demands for safety respected” and more than a third believed academics should be sacked for teaching “material that heavily offends some students”. “Many people may be surprised, perhaps even unsettled”, the report observed, “by the greater keenness of students to limit what their peers and lecturers can say and do within the law”.

Last week, the Office for Students, as part of its regular reporting on the impact of Prevent guidance, ["the government anti-terror policy that has helped create a climate of self-censorship"], published data on cancellations of university talks. Out of 31,545 speakers in the academic year 2021-22, 260 had their events cancelled. The reasons for doing so are unclear; the OfS data unfortunately does not show how many speakers were banned because their views were deemed unacceptable. Whatever the figure, it is small – less than 1%. This shouldn’t lead us to conclude, though, that there is no issue. Controversial speakers will inevitably be small in number, but attempts to stop them speaking often highlight a deeper problem, particularly the tendency to portray political and social disagreements as “hatred” or “bigotry”.

The aggression of transgender activists disturbs Malik.

The most incendiary issue at the moment is that of trans rights. “Gender critical” feminists such as Kathleen Stock or Julie Bindel, who argue for the importance of sex-based rights and for the exclusion of transgender women from sex-based, women-only spaces, such as refuges or prisons, have faced calls for their meetings to be shut down.

Many of their critics argue that such individuals are not being censored because they have other platforms on which they are able to express their views, from newspaper columns to books. That is to miss the point.

On this Malik would clearly be a full supporter of the "right to hear", so that even the least degree of censorship is an offence against the personal rights of those who would otherwise have been able to hear, maybe for the first time, a speaker offering unfashionable ideas.  He continues, referring to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which became law this month:

At the same time, opponents of gender critical views should be equally free to express themselves. Last week, a tweet from Oxford University LGBTQ+ campaign calling for Stock’s invitation to speak at the Oxford Union to be rescinded was taken down by the student union on the grounds it might infringe the new law. The [anti-woke] Free Speech Union crowed about it as a victory. It was, in fact, a blatant denial of free speech. The episode revealed both how state-imposed free speech can itself be a form of censorship and how little the FSU understands about the meaning of free expression.

Malik offers these points by way of conclusion:

There is an important debate about how to negotiate trans rights and women’s rights, and how best to ensure that both are respected. Shutting down one side of the debate as unacceptable will not settle the issues but merely make it more difficult to work out a fair solution.

For too many people today, on both the left and the anti-woke right, what matters about free speech depends upon which side of the culture wars they stand. It is an issue too important to be treated with such casual disdain.

There is no easy answer to the ostracism a person may face in a work environment, especially if the corporate HR personnel are DEI activists, or even among friends and neighbours. But a guiding principle for us all is: Live Not By Lies.

Ω See also:

"A Generational Threat to Free Expression" ‒ Survey data show that Americans under 30 prize cancel culture over liberty. Eric Kaufmann ‒ City Journal

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