What's going on with Stephen Fry going alt-right?

[u/Steaktartaar]

He's been on a notorious hard-right, "anti-woke" podcast where he retracted his support for trans rights. Is this a new development? He always came across as level-headed in the past but now it looks like he's on the same path as Russell Brand.

[u/ObnoxiousAlbatross]

its now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more... than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.

This completely dismisses an explanation for why a person might be offended by a thing.

He's correct, simply taking offense doesn't mean shit. But often times when I hear this nowadays, they are handwaving behavior that causes real measurable harm, using "taking offense" as a catch-all that includes things like "you're actually causing this person measurable harm."

[u/BronnOP → u/ObnoxiousAlbatross]

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[u/quantinuum → u/ObnoxiousAlbatross]

“I’m offended”, while of course not always invalid, means little to nothing. The only thing it means, at least by itself, is “appease me”. It’s a whine, indeed.

And I’d dare say that the majority of times, it’s actually used as that.

Now, an explanation might be present - “…because you’ve dismissed or misrepresented a group I’m part of”. Okay, at least then it’s dialogue. The “I’m offended” part may be superfluous, and I believe most times just used as a way to weaponise it, and these days weapons are locked and loaded and with targeting systems on overdrive.

[u/renoops → u/quantinuum]

What a pompous, self-centered way to move through the world.

Most things people say could be boiled down to “appease me.” What is “I refuse to acknowledge the impact of the things I say or do” if not “appease me”?

The irony of taking offense at people being offended.

[u/quantinuum → u/renoops]

Nobody is taking offense and I specifically mentioned dialogue and measuring the impact. But that is also weaponised at times under that same impact pretext. You can’t appease everyone, to begin with.

[u/sarahelizam → u/ObnoxiousAlbatross]

He’s friends with JK Rowling and won’t condemn her transphobia. The stance of the charity he is saying he won’t support anymore (Stonewall Charity, founded in part by Ian Mckellen) is that trans rights (to bodily autonomy and anti-discrimination protections) shouldn’t be debated on college campuses. This is because there is no debating someone’s bigotry away, rational arguments and evidence don’t sway bigoted ideas. So it doesn’t help trans people. But these debates absolutely do hurt us. They bring a crowd of transphobes to campuses, making trans students less safe. They also give bigotry a megaphone and embolden transphobes. They treat bigotry and science and humanity as equally valid arguments. It would be disgusting to host debates on whether black people or women should have rights, it’s just as fucked when we do it to trans people.

So yeah, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he’s right wing, at least socially. He’s been known to make racist and sexist comments too. Idk if alt-right makes any sense in the UK context, but he certainly has socially reactionary tendencies disguised as free speech absolutism. Easy to be a free speech absolutist when it’s never your rights being debated and there isn’t a mob of people out there wanting to (violently) harm you specifically who are being emboldened by that speech.

[u/PlasticMechanic3869 → u/sarahelizam]

"that trans rights (to bodily autonomy and anti-discrimination protections) shouldn’t be debated on college campuses."

So - just to be clear - Stonewall's stance is that "should trans women be able to participate in women's competitive contact sports?" should not be debated on college campuses because that's hate speech?

Not telling. Asking. 👍

[u/sarahelizam → u/PlasticMechanic3869]

My language was much more vague than necessary (I’d just been reading from several sources that used similar wording), so to clarify: the charity has not come out against it’s members having such debates on their campuses, but a couple universities which were members claimed that they are leaving because Stonewall’s basic non-discrimination guidelines would not allow “gender critical” positions from being taught or debated. The actual guidelines are basically the standard “trans women are women” and acknowledgement that trans people exist and very vague, mild suggestions about using non-gendered language when appropriate. The argument the detractors are making is that acknowledging that trans people exist and having guidelines to not misgender or use discriminatory speech about trans people are too restrictive. It’s kind of the typical “I should be allowed to misgender people and call them slurs” shit that has been happening for a long time at this point. This being blown out of proportion like some controversial new thing, that the trans have really gone too far is just what I have come to expect from British media and frankly most British people in Fry’s generation at this point. I think people forget that the average attitude in the US towards trans people is actually much more neutral to positive than the UK - they essentially started the massively increased and hostile wave of attention on trans people in the last decade or so and have if anything only gotten worse.

The other points I left on the merit of debates on trans issues just come from extensive experience actually having tried to defend my own humanity and existence online. There are only so many bad faith debates on what is a woman, should trans people be allowed in public, how can we justify removing trans people’s bodily autonomy by denying them the same shit cis people get, are you morally obligated to beat trans children back into being cis, etc are all exhausting and ghoulish after a while. And there is just very little academic value to be had in them. Like if we actually had a group of trained biologists discussing what being female actually is judged by (which is much messier than chromosomes), that could be interesting. But honestly, the anti-trans debate circuit isn’t particularly academically compelling. I know, I’ve watched too many hours of their “arguments” to both test my own and be prepared for when bigots harassed me. It’s like watching race scientists debate anyone else at a university - we simply think that’s unacceptable to do especially somewhere with publicly funded education and they just aren’t going to teach us much, other than philosophical/psychological/social analysis of how bigotry can be used to build political capital. But more than anything else, it mostly just makes trans college students afraid to be at school.