Whether it’s on race or gender, the extremists in our midst want to stop freedom of speech
Reasonable people (by which I obviously mean people like me) should by now be wondering if the fashion for passion in public life needs to have a bucket of cold water thrown over it. “Passion” originally stood for noble suffering in some greater cause. It has now degenerated to mean advocacy by noisy, righteous indignation, which brooks no opposition, often in a cause where the advocate pays no price at all. But on the face of it, some of today’s passions seem rather misguided affairs; the Stonewall rioters did not rise up against the New York Police Department’s harassment of gay men more than 50 years ago to allow people with penises to use women’s changing rooms or assault women in prison. And the result of passionate action is often the exact opposite of what campaigners hope to achieve.
Yet a passion for transgender equality has led otherwise sensible people (including some who owe their fame and fortune to her) to denounce JK Rowling for the perfectly commonplace observation that people who menstruate are called women. A passion for racial justice apparently provoked some, mostly, white people to throw public property into a harbour without bothering to ask the public, or even their elected representative, Bristol’s mayor, who happens to be black.
Trevor Phillips – The Times – June 15, 2020.
