We have many issues at Aberdeen! Unsurprisingly, the academic famous for his trigger warnings, looks like you think he might look - a Warhammer weirdo. I used to quite like the weirdos at work until they started to hold sway. No offence to Warhammerers or weirdos, I just don't think they should have the strongest voice on campus. Needless to say, progress flags are fawned over and pronouns on email signatures are ubiquitous amongst admin staff in particular - no trigger warnings for advocating dangerous gender ideology. I managed to persuade our Head of School to invite Simon Fanshawe to present a Webinar on how we facilitate different opinions and voices - the irony is of course lost on the TRAs (staff and students) who 'mercilessly bullied' our HoS and senior admin person such that Simon's webinar was cancelled. The TRAs would feel 'unsafe' of course - the webinar was voluntary and Simon wouldn't even have been in Aberdeen! Unsafe my hole! Currently considering a pic of JK on my office door. She holds an honorary doctorate from the uni - surely no-one could object?!
You give me hope John that all is not lost. My daughter is looking at Aberdeen uni in 2 years. Please don’t go anywhere and yes, pic of JKR on the door would be great! I’m a teacher in the shire and I feel like we can’t say anything at all.
But I’m biding my time- I feel this madness is waning.
In the meantime- teachers and lecturers will self censor and contentious subjects will be avoided I think. Making us all dumber.
Thank you, Teacake, that's really kind of you to say. I'm in Biological Sciences - give me a shout if I can help with anything. Show you round, talk at your school etc. Cass is a game changer, so I think you're right on the waning madness, but ideologies are so embedded and most people so compliant that I imagine it'll take a while. The only thing stopping me putting up the JKR pic is not wanting to give my HoS ball-ache. The poor guy has been on the receiving end of an enormous amount of crap. But! We have 2 progress flags on the doors in the next corridor and I think it's probably fair that GCs also feel represented 🤷♂️
That's shocking John and my commiserations. If the Simon Fanshawe cancellation wasn't widely reported on its another example no doubt of the numerous unknown cancellations as well as self censorship that stifles open reasonable discussion and thought. Surprised JK hasn't been dis-honoured yet by the Warhammer infantry.
Thanks, Ewan - I was furious as was Simon. It was reported in the student newspaper, but they're not exactly neutral observers. Not sure if it was picked up by other outlets. We have other plans in the pipeline though, so watch this space, so to speak. How feckin dare the activists close down discussion - they're supposed to be scientists ffs.
The more they try and police language, the more I want to use the ‘offending’ phrases. Maybe it’s time for a Dissidents Dictionary so that we’ve all got a handy guide to the phrases we should all be using in order to stop the glorious variety of the English language being reduced to so much bland background musak.
As a non-native speaker I take great delight in using offensive and outdated phrases I've nicked from the likes of PG Wodehouse.
When called out I'm turning into a proper Titania McGrath kind of tyke by accusing them of English speaking privilege and oppressing those who are multi lingual.
Unfortunately I don't have the proper accent, but I like to accompany it with the air of the dowager countess from Downton Abby. :-)
Dear Andrew, I LOVE every single one of your essays, but this more than others! As a writer, I am particularly "triggered" by this rape of language and feel like screaming when I see other writers--some of them respected--who have (more or less unconsciously) adopted the new "wooden" language (this was the term we had in Communism for the language imposed upon us by the nomenklatura) of the offense gatekeepers. Because the desire to purify language of all kinds of "offensive" words is paralleled by the desire to constantly invent new words (you know, words that have "x"s in them).
As someone who was brought up in the seventies, when absolutely everything was un-PC, I happily go about my day (even at my higher ed place of work, though I fortunately have little direct contact with the perpetually triggered) speaking freely, and ready to look hurt at anyone who might dare to curtail my right to freedom of expression. I occasionally experience a wince on my use of 'thanks luv' when speaking to middle-class women. No-one has had the cojones to openly object, although my employer's new harassment policy now includes an anonymous reporting facility, so I could find myself subject to some form of re-education, eventually. My defence will obviously be that this language is part of my East London, working class heritage (it would genuinely be very difficult to alter this habit), to counter-complain on grounds of cultural oppression and hope that HR has not been infected with the most egregious strain of the intersectional virus. If anyone is experiencing a 'cultural genocide' at the moment it's the English, white working-class. Our only defence is that the middle-class twats pushing this batshittery think we are irredeemable by dint of our ignorance.
One of my ex's was a Communist. She used to give me a slap on the wrist whenever I said 'luv' in a shop or wherever. It's an extremely difficult habit to break, even when you are conscious that it rubs your other half up the wrong way. The amount of 'force' required to ensure compliance of authoritarian speech codes gives me hope.
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”
You'd have no hope because class of course is never included in the intersectional identity oppression Olympics as the whole sport is solely a middle class one.
It's about control wrapped in a cloak of "empathy" and I guess that's why a lot of people don't see it as an attack on our speech and thought.
I find it interesting that "Terry & June" are slapped with a trigger warning but that the Monty Python sketch "Mrs Niggerbaiting" is still up on Spotify. But may be that's the point of all of this. When people are successfully conditioned to believe speech can be literal violence, even in mild mannered shows like Terry & June, they will voluntarily scrutinize streaming services and libraries for so called transgressions
I had to laugh a couple of years ago when Bill Maher pointed out that the word "trigger warning" is now apparently "triggering". But that's how you control people's speech and more sinister, how you control people's thinking.
I started my day with this and I've giggled and giggled. So thank you.
Beautifully written, wonderfully witty and angry maybe but with your usual good grace.
Agree with every word. It is actually all deeply depressing. I'm like T. Terfin below as I too want to use the forbidden and usually completely inoffensive words even more. A Dissidents Dictionary. Oh yes please!
"Just let me watch Terry & June in peace, you bastards" -- a perfectly judged punchline to an eloquent piece. Thank you, Andrew, for such sweet fierceness.
If I had a great deal of money, I'd made sure to air the show "Allo Allo" to every British channel possible without any warnings or anything. And just mine that vitriol for a wonderful show.
I think it would break viewing records.
On the note of the article, care not for the entitlement of fools.
Konstantin Kisin says that ‘politically correct’ language originated in Stalinist Russia. There was the truth & there was what it was politically correct to say & the twain didn’t meet unless you wanted to be carted off to the gulag. I remember it began here in the UK as a form of politeness but has morphed into a sinister form of social & political control. I love TT’s idea of a dissident’s dictionary; Ambrose Bierce’s ‘Devil’s Dictionary’ could be a guide of sorts. Thanks for this wonderful piece, Andrew; I laughed so much I choked on my tea, & there’s no better tribute than this.
Oh, my, this absolutely made my day--and as usual the comments here are terrific, too. I tried to choose a favorite line to quote, but it turns out EVERY line is quotable. So, just at random, this one: "And surely if you’re the sort of person you can be triggered by trigger warnings, you shouldn’t be on the internet at all. You should be confined to a care home where all the cutlery is blunted and the walls are made of sponge." And I say amen. Thank you Andrew!
Too right ,Andrew. Well said. Book burning and silencing free speech is absolutely necessary to maintain a totalitarian regime. We must resist them at all costs 💪💪💪👍x
I'm still struggling with what the Vocabulary Politburo think is wrong with 'homeless person'!!
As soon as the British Board of Film Censors pushed Mary Poppins up to 'parental guidance' because of the use of the word 'Hottentot' I made sure I featured the one scene where the word appears (fleetingly) ( the endpiece):
Just to cheer us all up, Dr Doyle - or may I call you Andrew? - Let's have a quiz section. Here is a short poem, and you have to say which composer set it to music:
We have many issues at Aberdeen! Unsurprisingly, the academic famous for his trigger warnings, looks like you think he might look - a Warhammer weirdo. I used to quite like the weirdos at work until they started to hold sway. No offence to Warhammerers or weirdos, I just don't think they should have the strongest voice on campus. Needless to say, progress flags are fawned over and pronouns on email signatures are ubiquitous amongst admin staff in particular - no trigger warnings for advocating dangerous gender ideology. I managed to persuade our Head of School to invite Simon Fanshawe to present a Webinar on how we facilitate different opinions and voices - the irony is of course lost on the TRAs (staff and students) who 'mercilessly bullied' our HoS and senior admin person such that Simon's webinar was cancelled. The TRAs would feel 'unsafe' of course - the webinar was voluntary and Simon wouldn't even have been in Aberdeen! Unsafe my hole! Currently considering a pic of JK on my office door. She holds an honorary doctorate from the uni - surely no-one could object?!
You give me hope John that all is not lost. My daughter is looking at Aberdeen uni in 2 years. Please don’t go anywhere and yes, pic of JKR on the door would be great! I’m a teacher in the shire and I feel like we can’t say anything at all.
But I’m biding my time- I feel this madness is waning.
In the meantime- teachers and lecturers will self censor and contentious subjects will be avoided I think. Making us all dumber.
Thank you, Teacake, that's really kind of you to say. I'm in Biological Sciences - give me a shout if I can help with anything. Show you round, talk at your school etc. Cass is a game changer, so I think you're right on the waning madness, but ideologies are so embedded and most people so compliant that I imagine it'll take a while. The only thing stopping me putting up the JKR pic is not wanting to give my HoS ball-ache. The poor guy has been on the receiving end of an enormous amount of crap. But! We have 2 progress flags on the doors in the next corridor and I think it's probably fair that GCs also feel represented 🤷♂️
That's shocking John and my commiserations. If the Simon Fanshawe cancellation wasn't widely reported on its another example no doubt of the numerous unknown cancellations as well as self censorship that stifles open reasonable discussion and thought. Surprised JK hasn't been dis-honoured yet by the Warhammer infantry.
Thanks, Ewan - I was furious as was Simon. It was reported in the student newspaper, but they're not exactly neutral observers. Not sure if it was picked up by other outlets. We have other plans in the pipeline though, so watch this space, so to speak. How feckin dare the activists close down discussion - they're supposed to be scientists ffs.
well done, John
Thank you, Dusty
The more they try and police language, the more I want to use the ‘offending’ phrases. Maybe it’s time for a Dissidents Dictionary so that we’ve all got a handy guide to the phrases we should all be using in order to stop the glorious variety of the English language being reduced to so much bland background musak.
As a non-native speaker I take great delight in using offensive and outdated phrases I've nicked from the likes of PG Wodehouse.
When called out I'm turning into a proper Titania McGrath kind of tyke by accusing them of English speaking privilege and oppressing those who are multi lingual.
Unfortunately I don't have the proper accent, but I like to accompany it with the air of the dowager countess from Downton Abby. :-)
Keep it up. I'd love to hear you!
😂
Dear Andrew, I LOVE every single one of your essays, but this more than others! As a writer, I am particularly "triggered" by this rape of language and feel like screaming when I see other writers--some of them respected--who have (more or less unconsciously) adopted the new "wooden" language (this was the term we had in Communism for the language imposed upon us by the nomenklatura) of the offense gatekeepers. Because the desire to purify language of all kinds of "offensive" words is paralleled by the desire to constantly invent new words (you know, words that have "x"s in them).
As someone who was brought up in the seventies, when absolutely everything was un-PC, I happily go about my day (even at my higher ed place of work, though I fortunately have little direct contact with the perpetually triggered) speaking freely, and ready to look hurt at anyone who might dare to curtail my right to freedom of expression. I occasionally experience a wince on my use of 'thanks luv' when speaking to middle-class women. No-one has had the cojones to openly object, although my employer's new harassment policy now includes an anonymous reporting facility, so I could find myself subject to some form of re-education, eventually. My defence will obviously be that this language is part of my East London, working class heritage (it would genuinely be very difficult to alter this habit), to counter-complain on grounds of cultural oppression and hope that HR has not been infected with the most egregious strain of the intersectional virus. If anyone is experiencing a 'cultural genocide' at the moment it's the English, white working-class. Our only defence is that the middle-class twats pushing this batshittery think we are irredeemable by dint of our ignorance.
Well said. My husband is an east ender and he ‘luvs’ all women when he doesn’t know their name.
One of my ex's was a Communist. She used to give me a slap on the wrist whenever I said 'luv' in a shop or wherever. It's an extremely difficult habit to break, even when you are conscious that it rubs your other half up the wrong way. The amount of 'force' required to ensure compliance of authoritarian speech codes gives me hope.
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”
You'd have no hope because class of course is never included in the intersectional identity oppression Olympics as the whole sport is solely a middle class one.
It's about control wrapped in a cloak of "empathy" and I guess that's why a lot of people don't see it as an attack on our speech and thought.
I find it interesting that "Terry & June" are slapped with a trigger warning but that the Monty Python sketch "Mrs Niggerbaiting" is still up on Spotify. But may be that's the point of all of this. When people are successfully conditioned to believe speech can be literal violence, even in mild mannered shows like Terry & June, they will voluntarily scrutinize streaming services and libraries for so called transgressions
I had to laugh a couple of years ago when Bill Maher pointed out that the word "trigger warning" is now apparently "triggering". But that's how you control people's speech and more sinister, how you control people's thinking.
Oh Andrew!
I started my day with this and I've giggled and giggled. So thank you.
Beautifully written, wonderfully witty and angry maybe but with your usual good grace.
Agree with every word. It is actually all deeply depressing. I'm like T. Terfin below as I too want to use the forbidden and usually completely inoffensive words even more. A Dissidents Dictionary. Oh yes please!
This infantilisation is a necessary component of totalitarianism I think?
"Just let me watch Terry & June in peace, you bastards" -- a perfectly judged punchline to an eloquent piece. Thank you, Andrew, for such sweet fierceness.
If I had a great deal of money, I'd made sure to air the show "Allo Allo" to every British channel possible without any warnings or anything. And just mine that vitriol for a wonderful show.
I think it would break viewing records.
On the note of the article, care not for the entitlement of fools.
Thanks Andrew
Konstantin Kisin says that ‘politically correct’ language originated in Stalinist Russia. There was the truth & there was what it was politically correct to say & the twain didn’t meet unless you wanted to be carted off to the gulag. I remember it began here in the UK as a form of politeness but has morphed into a sinister form of social & political control. I love TT’s idea of a dissident’s dictionary; Ambrose Bierce’s ‘Devil’s Dictionary’ could be a guide of sorts. Thanks for this wonderful piece, Andrew; I laughed so much I choked on my tea, & there’s no better tribute than this.
Oh, my, this absolutely made my day--and as usual the comments here are terrific, too. I tried to choose a favorite line to quote, but it turns out EVERY line is quotable. So, just at random, this one: "And surely if you’re the sort of person you can be triggered by trigger warnings, you shouldn’t be on the internet at all. You should be confined to a care home where all the cutlery is blunted and the walls are made of sponge." And I say amen. Thank you Andrew!
My country of Canada is certainly bonkers and an embarrassment of late. The province of Ontario is especially dire.
Too right ,Andrew. Well said. Book burning and silencing free speech is absolutely necessary to maintain a totalitarian regime. We must resist them at all costs 💪💪💪👍x
Thanks for all this, Andrew, and totally agree.
I'm still struggling with what the Vocabulary Politburo think is wrong with 'homeless person'!!
As soon as the British Board of Film Censors pushed Mary Poppins up to 'parental guidance' because of the use of the word 'Hottentot' I made sure I featured the one scene where the word appears (fleetingly) ( the endpiece):
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?utm_source=publication-search
Dusty
Do you think the BBC would like to do a re-run of this?
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=monty+pyhton+prejudice&mid=135F9FABDDEE55F5996E135F9FABDDEE55F5996E&FORM=VIRE
😊
Probably give them a heart attack
The BBC have targeted Terry because they found out that he identified as a school boy and exposed his Curly Wurly.
Just to cheer us all up, Dr Doyle - or may I call you Andrew? - Let's have a quiz section. Here is a short poem, and you have to say which composer set it to music:
Apollo’s Song for his boyfriend Hyacinthus:
With longing desire,
I press your tender cheeks,
My sweet, beautiful Hyacinthus.
Kissing your eyes makes me brim with happiness.
They are my morning stars,
And the sun of my very soul.