A HATE CRIME TOO FAR

3 February 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/02/football-fan-banned-gender-critical-posts-permier-league/

FIRST REACTION

This is absolutely appalling. These are people who would call themselves Liberal Democrats but in fact they are fascists.

ON MATURE PHILO REFLECTION

We have to understand two things, the first of which is pretty hard to follow and the second to accept.

THE WAR ON INTOLERANCE

Do you remember the war on Racism? the idea that you should be free to be what you want, irrespective of your skin colour. Okay everyone follows that. 

Then came the war on sexism, specifically women should not be discriminated against particularly in the workplace just because they are women. 

After racism and sexism came sexual orientation. You could not discriminate against a person because of their sexual orientation. And we got the lgptq+ movement. 

Finally we have a very strange movement where people should not be discriminated against because they are human beings - this is called post-humanism or trans-humanism and it's a weird one!

Basically it is Liberalism gone mad, it is the idea that it should not be possible to box you into a category, you are free to be whatever you want to be.

So people who think that trans women are not women are stating a biological fact, but not a what you might call "mental-construct" or “lived identity” fact ( I don't know the name given in philosophy to this particular branch of thought) as you are free to construct - and impose on others - your vision of your own identity.

Now the bit that we don't like.

THE WAR ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Okay, let all these people escape from their category - black, woman, gay++, human - let them dream, dream on, no problem. 

But what we *don't* like is that if anyone who wakes them from this dream by pointing out the obvious - "you are biologically a man" - is committing what looks to be a criminal offence and accountable to the police and even through the courts for this disrespect.

The irony is that it runs contrary to the idea of liberalism in the first place! The basic idea of liberalism is that you should be free to disagree, freedom of expression!!!

And as the lady in the DT piece says, it is all a distraction from the real problems the police should be dealing with, such as knife crime; to which I would add debt, war, inequality...