High price of losing free speech
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THANK heavens for JK Rowling, Sharron Davies, Professor Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel – among others – for standing up for free speech and common sense; for knowing what a woman is and not being afraid to say it; and for fighting to protect women’s and girls’ safe spaces, the integrity of women’s sport and for defending biological sex. Who’d have thought it would be so dangerous to state the obvious, that men and women are physically and biologically different.To be cancelled and lose your job – and now in Scotland to be potentially arrested for a so-called “hate crime” – for simply stating a fact about what a woman is, makes the mind boggle.
Free speech is essential, and the most precious aspect of a functioning liberal democracy. Allowing people to freely assert their opinion allows people to understand one another and the choices they are making, and you need to hear different sides of an argument to get the full picture from which to draw your own conclusion. That is why a report by Dr Hilary Cass, which came out this week, is so important. She is the consultant paediatrician who was asked to look into how the NHS should care for children and adolescents who are questioning their gender identity.
The review was partly in response to a huge increase in the number of referrals to The Gender Identity Development Service, run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which had grown from under 250 referrals in 2011-12, to more than 5,000 in 2021-22. How can the numbers have possibly surged like this in just 10 years?
There are nearly 400 pages in the report but it is well worth reading.
Dr Cass rightly has concerns over the widespread adoption of “affirmative care” – in other words just going along with the child’s claims, where children are effectively being allowed to change gender in schools and by doctors without any real questioning, and where debate was being closed down for fear of being labelled transphobic.
Dr Cass said: “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.” Absolutely, it must.
It’s the left who have been closing down the debate with its culture wars and cancel culture.
The SNP’s Hate Crime Bill was passed on April 1, supposedly under the ruse of protecting people, when really it’s all about stopping people being allowed to say anything that the Scottish Nationalists do not agree with.
It is chilling.
And remember how Labour turned on its own MP Rosie Duffield for standing up for the rights of biological women and all but hounded her out of the party.
Stopping debate is not just a legal and democratic outrage – as JK Rowling is so brilliantly proving – it is also letting down the most vulnerable in society, those in desperate need of a caring conversation and significant explanation of the steps they are planning to take.
The “politically correct” left in this country is so intolerant of other opinions that, step by step, it is doing everything it can, starting with bullying, but now in Scotland via the criminal law – to stop people being able to speak freely, even when what they are saying is factual.
Well, we can’t say that George Orwell didn’t warn us can we?