Stephen Fry Attacks Victims of Child Sex Abuse

[pErvinalia]

I know I'm going to regret posting this, as it's going to draw the bigots in like moths to a flame. But I thought it's very topical for both rationalist and atheist interests, given Fry is well known as both. There's a link in there to his interview, which that Cunt posted a few days ago in another thread.

Free speech is under attack and here comes Stephen Fry to defend it. Bemoaning the “infantilising” culture of safe spaces and trigger warnings that has developed at universities in recent years, Fry launches into an extraordinary attack on victims of sexual abuse, saying: “It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy.” It was a sustained attack. “Self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity,” he said. “Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is, we’ll feel sorry for you if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Grow up.”

That such contempt for victims of child abuse should emerge from the lips of Fry, a man lauded for his great work highlighting mental health issues, is remarkable. That he should use his right to free speech and his platform to express himself in this way is reprehensible. It is also risible, for this is the same Fry who regularly flounces off Twitter because he doesn’t want to hear people criticising him over things he has said and done. Now he expects us to join him in condemning people who have been affected by events they could not possibly control.

And there are many of them. A recent study found that up to 80% of abused people had at least one psychiatric disorder by their 21st birthday: depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide. Schoolyard bullying can be just as destructive, with one study arguing that bullying carried out by other children is five times more likely than neglect or abuse at home to cause anxiety.

Just as the body’s immune system is still forming in childhood, so too is the brain’s stress response. The effects of childhood trauma cannot be overstated: abuse, sexual abuse in particular, is devastating. Children need love, and they need to feel safe.

While the effects of abuse can never be erased completely, therapy for survivors is crucial. Despite this a recent study in the US revealed that, of the 294,000 reported child abuse cases, only 81,000 of the survivors had received any form of counselling. We don’t live in a culture that “indulges” abuse victims; we live in one that is woefully failing them. Fry is talking rubbish.

He is allowed to, of course, because of free speech: for in 2016, an absolutist interpretation of free speech has become popular among the chattering classes. If only the overwhelmingly white, middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, male-dominated commentariat would take “freedom from prejudice” as seriously as it takes “freedom of expression”.

Free speech means something only if you have a platform with which to use it. These free speech fetishists don’t seem to realise that “free speech” is a privilege usually afforded only to people like themselves. To blithely assert that everyone enjoys the same right to free speech is like claiming that I have a right to buy a large house in north London because there is a “free market”. Theoretically it is possible, but life in our real world isn’t like that.

{cont}

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ?CMP=fb_gu

And just to draw the liberals in as well, this is my favourite bit:

"He is allowed to, of course, because of free speech: for in 2016, an absolutist interpretation of free speech has become popular among the chattering classes. If only the overwhelmingly white, middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, male-dominated commentariat would take “freedom from prejudice” as seriously as it takes “freedom of expression”.

Free speech means something only if you have a platform with which to use it. These free speech fetishists don’t seem to realise that “free speech” is a privilege usually afforded only to people like themselves. To blithely assert that everyone enjoys the same right to free speech is like claiming that I have a right to buy a large house in north London because there is a “free market”. Theoretically it is possible, but life in our real world isn’t like that."

[cronus]

Fry has a right to his opinion and folks out there have a right not to read it. He might have a big megaphone on account of celebrity entertainer status but his moral and social insights carry no greater, or lesser, weight than the next guy in a pub on a Saturday night. Some claim he is smart. But his area of excellence is gobbing off and acting not astrophysics.

[Svartalf]

Yay for the Fry

[devogue]

I think he got caught out with a bit of muddled stream of consciousness.

I totally agree with him about self pity - it used to be the bane of my life and of those close to me. It really is self-indulgent cuntishness.

He should have said that victims should do their best to avoid self-pity because it is self-defeating and very destructive, but he didn't - he lost the run of himself and came across as a twat.

[pErvinalia]

If that's what he meant, then yeah.

There's two problems with his "self-pity" thing. One, who says that child abuse victims are suffering from self-pity? That's his subjective assessment. Where's the qualified psychological evidence backing this up? Secondly, his assessment that "self-pity is the ugliest human emotion" is totally random. Why should anyone care what some random guy thinks on behalf of all humanity? And what the hell is an "ugly" emotion? Who cares if a victim is "ugly", whatever that means? What does that have to do with whether they are psychologically suffering from their abuse?

Further, it's highly hypocritical of him as he's a well known sufferer of depression and a bit of a celebrity spokesman for the cause. Ok, Fry, perhaps you just snap out your depression, you fat cunt...

[JimC]

While the effects of abuse can never be erased completely, therapy for survivors is crucial. Despite this a recent study in the US revealed that, of the 294,000 reported child abuse cases, only 81,000 of the survivors had received any form of counselling. We don’t live in a culture that “indulges” abuse victims; we live in one that is woefully failing them. Fry is talking rubbish.

The problem here is that these reported cases include the whole spectrum, from serious abuse that would definitely have left serious scars and where therapy would be vital, down to very minor "touchings" that in the past would have been ignored, but in the current overblown climate are treated exactly the same as the serious cases. Fry made the mistake of giving a blanket dismissal to all, without indicating that he meant the ones that only a very pure form of political correctness could label as abuse.

The real issue is what is the proportion of serious to trivial...

[NineBerry]

I think he got caught out with a bit of muddled stream of consciousness.

I totally agree with him about self pity - it used to be the bane of my life and of those close to me. It really is self-indulgent cuntishness.

He should have said that victims should do their best to avoid self-pity because it is self-defeating and very destructive, but he didn't - he lost the run of himself and came across as a twat.

This.

[laklak]

Yeah, I think he just went too far. He's always been a bit abrasive and offensive, it's part of his shtick. I know I've offended people both online and IRL by taking it a joke too far.

[laklak]

Yeah, I think he just went overboard. He's always been abrasive and offensive, it's part of his shtick. I know I've offended people both online and IRL by taking it a joke too far.

[Seth]

Free speech means something only if you have a platform with which to use it.

Which these days, unlike earlier periods, virtually everyone does. It's called "The Internet." That's the greatest and most history-changing aspect of the Internet; its nearly unlimited and entirely egalitarian availability of a platform for one's exercise of free speech, as amply demonstrated by the very article you posted, constitutes the most fundamental change in human society and politics in human history.

Now, it is true that in particular totalitarian societies (virtually all of them left-wing liberal fascist regimes like Communist China and North Korea...and the UK, where dissing Muslims on Facebook will get you a visit from the actual police) "free speech" is virtually non-existent, but then again that is the status quo ante for most of the planet prior to the development of the Internet, which means that people should be rejoicing in the relatively newfound ability to communicate with people in real time on the other side of the planet rather than bitching and moaning about non-existent platforms.

So, this is nothing more than an ignorant and inflammatory (not to mention untrue) non-sequitur by the author.

These free speech fetishists don’t seem to realise that “free speech” is a privilege usually afforded only to people like themselves.

Yes, traditionally this is true, but no longer I'm afraid,which makes this plaint more ignorant and inflammatory drivel that is contextually irrelevant.

To blithely assert that everyone enjoys the same right to free speech is like claiming that I have a right to buy a large house in north London because there is a “free market”. Theoretically it is possible, but life in our real world isn’t like that."[/i]

This, on the other hand, is one massive strawman argument created by an ambiguous and flexible use of the word "enjoys." Nobody said everyone "enjoys" the right to free speech insofar as it means "has the present ability to effectively and persuasively exercise the right to speak freely in some public forum", merely that, in this context, they possess that right and therefore are free to exercise it at their pleasure. How they go about it, if they go about it, where they go about it, how effective their speech might be at persuading others to a particular position and if anybody at all bothers to listen has absolutely nothing whatever to do with whether or not everyone "enjoys" the "right to free speech."

In nations that secure the natural human right of free speech through the force of law every person "enjoys" that right exactly equally to every other person in that every person's right to speak freely is equally protected by the applicable laws.

But what the author of this tripe is suggesting is that because equality of outcomes, which is to say that some persons (rich white people) are better situated and are better able to communicate their ideas to an audience and thus persuade them, is not "equal" to the present ability of some other persons, like victims of sexual assault in terms of access to fora, effectiveness of the argument and degree of persuasion of the audience, this is somehow unfair and must somehow be redressed. The author's evident solution to this is not to solicit more speech, but rather to denigrate and presumably to suppress speech that the author thinks is inappropriate or insensitive to some other person or persons.

But that's not how the right to free speech works. The right to free speech, just like every other right, is neither a guarantee of equality of outcomes nor a mandate for suppression of the equal rights of others as a method of balancing some perceived social or political imbalance. It's just a protected right to express oneself, well or poorly. rightly or wrongly, morally or immorally, persuasively or pointlessly. It's up to the speaker to find an appropriate and effective forum for such speech and to formulate the persuasive arguments in ways that garner support (or opposition) from the audience, and nobody owes anyone else anything other than benign tolerance of any and all exercises of free speech. Certainly nobody owes anyone else a forum, their ear or their approval of the message.

If you cannot do the above yourself, you can hire someone who is better at it than you are to do it. If you can't do that, well, life's a bitch...like my ex-fiancee, and you're just screwed, so get to work and improve your communication skills and work harder at exercising them in effective fora.

But please don't argue for, much less try to suppress the speech of others because you feel slighted, disenfranchised or inadequate, because that's the very essence of liberal fascism at work.

[Rum]

Talk about 'spinning'. The article accuses Fry of 'contempt' for abuse victims which is way over the top. If you go back to the original interview he was talking about 'trigger warnings', 'safe spaces' and the like and using abuse (OK a slightly risky tack) as an example.

“In terms of how they think, they can’t bear complexity. The idea that things aren’t easy to understand,” said Fry, who has spoken openly in the past of his own mental illness. “They want to be told, or they want to be able to decide and say, ‘This is good and this is bad,’ and anything that conflicts with that is not to be borne.”

Stephen Fry deletes Twitter account after Baftas 'bag lady' criticism

Using child sex abuse as an example, Fry said people who wanted warnings on disturbing texts needed to grow up.

“There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape,” he said. “If you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry.

“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”

[Seth]

Talk about 'spinning'. The article accuses Fry of 'contempt' for abuse victims which is way over the top. If you go back to the original interview he was talking about 'trigger warnings', 'safe spaces' and the like and using abuse (OK a slightly risky tack) as an example.

“In terms of how they think, they can’t bear complexity. The idea that things aren’t easy to understand,” said Fry, who has spoken openly in the past of his own mental illness. “They want to be told, or they want to be able to decide and say, ‘This is good and this is bad,’ and anything that conflicts with that is not to be borne.”

Stephen Fry deletes Twitter account after Baftas 'bag lady' criticism

Using child sex abuse as an example, Fry said people who wanted warnings on disturbing texts needed to grow up.

“There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape,” he said. “If you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry.

“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”

Well said. And his was a perfectly appropriate response to the cultural Marxists and liberal fascists who want to censor everybody else's speech because it might "microagress" some overly-sensitive (or politically motivated) half-wit.

One does not deal with the consequences of being sexually abused as a child by prohibiting everyone else from discussing child sexual abuse, which is exactly what the fuckwit author of the criticism of Fry intends and argues for. That's just plain stupidity. If anything, silencing open discussion of child sexual assault is more harmful to victims of such abuse than open dialogues are. I think this is pretty plain to see and haven't we, as a civilized society, taken great pains and expended much effort to avoid the harmful practice of making discussion of child sexual abuse a taboo subject.

This fucking nitwit is trying to reverse fifty years of hard-fought and hard-won victories over the stigma of child sexual abuse, which has been a direct contributor to the increasing instance of early reporting of child sexual abuse by the victims, as opposed to the old practice of hiding it as if it were a shameful thing that a child was victimized by a criminal sexual predator, thus dooming the child to a lifetime of unresolved angst and guilt.

Paris Lee is a fuckwitted liberal fascist who is dancing on the bodies of abused children in her zeal to heap opprobrium on Fry. What a despicable piece of human trash she is.

[cronus]

Unusual co-alignment of Rum-Seth sentiments which could be argued is interesting.

[devogue]

Unusual co-alignment of Rum-Seth sentiments which could be argued is interesting.

I feel triggered.

[NineBerry]

Having trigger warnings does not ban anything.