‘Safe spaces’ and the death of free speech
Once dismissed as a student fad, ‘trigger warning’ culture now grips society at large – but it’s time to fight back, says Frank Furedi
Of all the remarkable developments of the past decade, none has been more sinister than the West’s gradual surrender of humankind’s most important values: the twin ideals of freedom of speech and expression.
A decade ago, today’s language of “trigger warnings”, “safe spaces” and “no-platforming” of speakers would have sounded utterly foreign. Back then, the word “controversial” was something to be celebrated; a litmus test for the broad church of thought that acts as a lifeblood in any thriving democracy. Yet today, the term is used negatively, often levied against those who dare to cause offence.
And so now, university unions – once places whose existence was predicated on being a market for ideas – insist that “controversial speakers” sign a form promising not to say things that make people feel uncomfortable. Indeed, universities now hire “safe space marshals” who monitor public meetings and can be seen lurking at the back of the hall.
This wariness towards open discussion has now seeped into the mainstream. Last month, Harry Miller, a former constable, was visited by an officer from Humberside Police after posting a comment about transgender people on Twitter. The officer informed him: “I am here to check your thinking.” Though Miller was informed that he had not committed a crime, he was told that his tweet would be recorded as a “hate incident” and his social media account would be monitored.
This draconian attitude to noncriminal acts of speech is proof that our right to free expression is in crisis. Nowhere is this more striking than among the younger generations. During the Sixties and Seventies, young people were at the forefront of the argument for expanding the parameters of freedom of speech to all spheres of life. The past decade has seen, for the first time in the modern era, many youngsters rebelling against this freedom. “You can’t say that,” has become the prevailing dogma.
This was borne out in a survey carried out by the think-tank Policy Exchange, which found that between two-fifths and half of those surveyed were not prepared to consistently support academic freedom. In similar surveys conducted in the US, 40-51 per cent of respondents agreed that in certain contexts the freedom of speech should be restricted.
In discussions with undergraduates, I have been struck by the vehemence with which they insist that people should not be allowed to make statements that others find offensive.
But the dire state of free speech today was brought home to me in February 2018. After I gave a public lecture on the subject of “Socialisation and Fear” at York St John University, a young professor came up to me and told me: “You forgot to mention the biggest fear we face as teachers: the fear that many students have of opening their mouth.”
She was right to remind me of this disturbing development. Selfcensorship – which is in many ways more insidious than the formal policing of language – has taken a vicelike grip on almost every aspect of social discourse. Indeed, the aforementioned Policy Exchange report found that only four in 10 Brexit supporters felt able to express their views in class. In a study carried out at Pomona College in the US, nearly 90 per cent of the respondents indicated that they self-censored because they were worried about saying things that others might find offensive.
But how did we get to this state? How, in the past decade, did we morph from a society that fought for the right to speak our minds, only to refuse to do so once we had attained it?
Until the turn of the century, advocates of censorship argued for the need to protect the public from subversive, indecent or heretical thought. Now the focus has changed, and regulating speech is frequently justified on the grounds that it protects the vulnerable from the psychological damage inflicted by painful words.
What’s interesting is how speech has become medicalised, and offensive words are represented as vehicles of a psychological disease. “We always knew words could hurt our feelings, but it turns out that words have a profound effect on our bodies as well,” claims Linda Pucci, a life coach, in her discussion of “toxic words”.
According to legal scholar Mari Matsuda, a zealous advocate of linguistic policing, the effects of “assaultive speech” are psychological symptoms and emotional distress including “fear in the gut, rapid pulse rate and difficulty breathing, nightmares, post traumatic disorder, hypertension, psychosis and suicide”.
The diseasing of offensive words allows anti-free-speech activists to claim that censorship is the cure – from this standpoint, protecting people from offensive words is a public duty. And through the amplification of the harmful properties of words and speech, language can be represented as a form of contagious toxin, leading to calls for a quarantine.
The swift ascendancy of the institution of the “safe space” that we have witnessed in the past 10 years is the inexorable outcome of this demand for criticism-free zones, everywhere from universities to a variety of public sector and private institutions, where people are relieved of the burden of having to deal with difficult thoughts and ideas.
Once people are judged too vulnerable to be able to handle the power of words, it is only a matter of time before human communication itself becomes a target of mistrust. When young people are told that fragility is the normal part of their existence, they can easily develop a disposition to be triggered by disturbing words, images and texts.
The invention of trigger warnings, and its expansion into all spheres of life in the past decade, highlights the powerful cultural forces that fuel the demand for regulation of all forms of human communication. Supporters insist people have to be safeguarded not only from disturbing speech, but also from upsetting passages in texts, and distressing images and scenes.
Now that trigger warnings have become so comprehensively institutionalised, it is easy to overlook their relatively recent vintage. They began to gain the attention of the media in 2013, which an article in the online magazine Slate designated “The Year of the Trigger Warning”.
At the time, they were regarded by many as a passing fad. Many academics dismissed them as a ludicrous proposition and said they would never adopt them for their courses. They, like many others, underestimated the
Students studying the Grimms’ fairy tales are cautioned about the ‘violent material’
influence of the fear of free speech, particularly on young people.
Two years later, students occupying Goldsmiths in London demanded that “trigger warnings must be regular practice in lectures and seminars”. Students demanding to be shielded from certain texts is an astonishing development in campus politics. But this appeal for protection from the unsettling consequences of literary texts through the introduction of trigger warnings became a feature of campus protest throughout the Anglo-american world.
Even ancient classic texts have become the targets. One Durham student complained that his peers were “expected to sit through lectures and tutorials discussing Lavinia’s rape in Titus Andronicus” though he was delighted that “we did get a trigger warning about bestiality with regards to part of the lecture on A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
It’s the bitter truth that, today, no one can seriously argue that trigger warning is a passing fad. Many of those professors who swore that they would never use them have changed their minds. As one US academic acknowledged: “I have intentionally adjusted my teaching materials as the political winds have shifted.” According to some estimates, almost 50 per cent of American academics use some type of trigger warning.
Institutions in the UK have followed suit. At Glasgow University, even students studying fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm are cautioned about the “violent material”, while those studying Classics are also offered warnings about Greek and Roman texts that might contain “extreme expressions of misogyny, suicide, and racist language and behaviour”. It is only a matter of time before students will require dispensation from a doctor before they can study Greek tragedies.
Even Oxbridge – supposedly home to Britain’s brightest minds – has been protecting students from the supposedly traumatic consequences of reading texts containing distressing episodes. At Cambridge, students were warned that a lecture on The Comedy of Errors and Titus Andronicus included discussions of sexual violence and assault.
Contrary to the widely held view, the frightening erosion of support for free speech is not confined to campuses. Trigger warnings are used in museums, theatres, festivals and even news stories. A BBC story about a recently discovered Caravaggio work begins with the statement: “Warning: The paintings featured below depict a graphic image”!
Even the police are not spared. Hampshire Police chiefs have issues trigger warnings in training exercise videos. In case would-be recruits are upset about scenes of crime, they are informed that if “you feel that this language is not acceptable to you, please close the package down and speak with your supervisor about how to proceed with completing your training”.
In its contemporary form, the diseasing of speech and texts not only curbs free communication and inquiry, it also infantilises its targets. The policing of language discourages people from developing a sense of intellectual independence and maturity through unregulated argument and debate. When people are advised what to expect to see when they view a painting, it is only a matter of time before they are lectured about how to react to it.
Do visitors need to be told at the William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain that his art contains “strong and sometimes challenging imagery” and “depictions of violence and suffering”? Is it really necessary for the Victoria and Albert Museum to inform visitors to its exhibition on the history of British humour that it “confronts uncomfortable truths about the past”? Since when has it been the business of public institutions in a free society to instruct its citizens how they should react to an exhibition and what they should think?
Cultivating free inquiry and recovering the spirit of freedom is the real challenge facing us in the 2020s. Yes, the freedom of expression is always a risky enterprise. Controversy and debate can lead towards the most unexpected outcomes. But instead of policing speech, a mature democracy must encourage open debate, for feeling uncertain and insecure is integral to mankind’s intellectual quest for clarity and knowledge.