Liberals, We need to do better to protect trans and disabled rights and stop worrying about the cancel culture myth.
Yesterday, I’ve found myself turning into beyond my personal echo chamber of a more or less balanced centre ground liberal news preference. Normally, keep up with things through series of podcasts whether it’s The Guardians Today In Focus, Times Radio from The Times and Sunday Times and flicking through trends and accounts I follow on Twitter. I see I engage with news and debate similar to people my age whether that’s Twitter or podcasts. However, at times the polarisation and tribalism of Twitter comes to the forefront and to the spotlight with little nuance or consideration for those who at the receiving end of the conversation.
Watching socialist Owen Jones who I whole heartedly admit there’s plenty I can disagree with snd Piers Morgan a self identified liberal but more a conservative same much I agree with sometimes as a liberal you do find yourself in the middle. Decided to sometimes burst and look beyond my echo chamber bubble sometimes feels more easier to watch it than engage with it. But watching the two discuss Morgan’s latest book the morning current affairs talk show host who have been making politicians run scarce and now is calling for his liberal chums to wake up and smell the coffee.
Morgan made apparent in conversation that he feels with wokeist liberal culture puts a threat to the freedom of speech flirting and getting stuck in the trans debate taking up most of the hour long conversation between the adversaries who claimed to have blocked each other online in a love hate frictional chat pressing the point of a tolerant debate from Morgan. It did felt tad bit uncomfortable or irrelevant to see two cisgendered males debating the anxieties in the so called trans debate. The presenter himself in conversations on the trans debate have talked to one trans woman on this matter.
What is so clear and apparent the declarations of free speech and a free media do conflict with the rights to freedom of expression, identity and the right to be free for discrimination. Morgan though claimed that those wokeist columnists have a narrow myopic and rigid view on the issue though Jones humoured Morgan with a trivial discussion of what if and what aboutist debate narrative which didn’t bode well for either. Jones allowing for anxieties to been expressed on his platform which come from a sense of transphobia of trans women taking cisgendered women’s safe spaces and that it would in a sexist mark would be unfair to put a male body against a female one in races. Putting back advancements of different body types and trans gendered women to be included in those spaces. Then, later in the chat Morgan myopically shown himself as a hypocrite of showing him as the narrow minded individual who thinks there’s still two genders seeing more than this non-binary gendered people mocking trans people and trans rights. Mocking and showing dismay of people who identify as trans species or as Astro species though he may see this as being absurd.
You can’t expect free speech to if it’s the free speech of a majority and shuts of the minority views. We as liberals mustn’t stand by freedom of speech, if what we say is discriminating others or oppressing others freedoms. Much of the media commentariat elite take fore granted the size of their platform the power and the audience they have and the responsibility they have not to shut out debate for your own world to much listen and learn.
I felt that Owen Jones disappointingly saw the rights of trans people were up for debate and relevant to bring it up with out a trans person in the conversation. As a disabled person I’m familiar with the words nothing about us with out us but I see trans people and other minority groups have an unequal access to the a platform where they have the same freedom of speech where they can discuss their rights, not just journalists with little experience of the topic. Something I know the disabled community are tired of.
Us liberals need to say minority groups deserve the principle “nothing about us, without us” if we going to see greater advancements on such issues we need to have a greater access to media and creative industries Jones stated there’s only on trans journalist that writes a column for the telegraph in British media. It’s clear that British liberalism is miles behind the new progressive liberalism that is likely to influence Biden’s choices on the topic.
The matter of trans rights and rights of minority groups get dragged in to culture wars which people like Suzanne Moore and JK Rowling have said. It’s not feeling your rights at threat but time to listen and learn to trans people while combatively debating with them. It’s tiring and fatiguing for trans people to whiteness constant friction in the media when it feels like going nowhere. I find personally why much debate and discourse from much of the commentariat has become polarised is from due to the amount of volume of stuff consumed in our news digests opinions are made on a whim when the likes of a Morgan enjoy the sound of their own voice rather than talking to many beyond his own echo chamber
